by Unknown
At the catapults in the bow, the swell made itself more strongly felt, and Pandur was reminded that he had been born with anything other than sea legs. Although he had been with the pirates for ten months now and had spent half that time at sea, he was still troubled by sea-sickness. But compared with the dance ahead of him, the little bit of tossing he was suffering now was not even the curtain-raiser to the curtain-raiser. If he was honest with himself, his upset stomach was less a product of the tossing motions than of the inner disquiet that had do with the fear of failure and the once more tangible fear of death.
He started the wamo's turbine. It sprang to life at once and hummed gently in neutral. Pandur could only hear the sound when he concentrated on it, but he felt the vibrations being transmitted through the bike's seat and handlebars to his body.
This mission was the fourth Pandur had been through as a wamo rider and in the three previous missions he had handled himself to his captain's complete satisfaction. There were really no rational grounds for his fear of failure. But it's a well-known fact that the glands don't give a shit about the supposed rationalizations of the cerebrum.
Pandur wished he were already out there on the wamo, powering into the attack. The moments before the catapult launch were always the worst, when the hovercraft, with perversely rubbery motions, was riding the waves at crazily high speed and when the canons were spitting ammo with an ear-shattering din right over the top of the catapults.
At this moment four spotlights attached to the bridge flared up in a blinding glare. Two pierced the darkness ahead, the others lit up port and starboard. Festive illuminations. Now they were getting down to the nitty-gritty.
The turbines set up a howl and the Broken Heart rose a few centimeters above the waterline. Tupamaro couldn't be seen behind the reflector glass of the cockpit, but it was a dead cert she had now put on the padded, cracked leather helmet with the red tin star stuck on the front, an ancient heirloom from the late Soviet Union. A quirk of hers that she wouldn't be without when the going got tough, probably a kind of lucky charm similar to Pandur's cyberdeck. Perhaps the helmet was also a crutch for some burden from the past that for her reached into the present.
Pandur felt he could see right before his eyes the hard lines of the tensed-up face under that leather helmet. Light-
blue eyes, which in moments like these appeared almost glazed, devoid of any emotional expression, but concentrating on the target with veritable fanaticism. The slightly quivering nostrils of a rather too short nose. The right hand grasping the speed controller like a claw, the sinews standing out beneath the skin like steel hawsers. The left hand anchored in the semi-circle of the servo-steering control. During attacks such as this the main rudder unit was disengaged and the pilot control deck took over.
The turbines set up a howl and at the same moment the hovercraft shot forward. The Broken Heart had taken up the chase.
Tupamaro now steered her hovercraft like a speedboat, if not like a jet, and she was bloody good at it. The respect Pandur showed his captain rested on this handling of an essentially cumbersome craft, which she performed with precision and lightning reactions. After all, Tupamaro was a sort of life insurance for him and Druse, not least when the wamos were being launched or recovered. And she kept her crew firmly in check, something which Pandur equally appreciated. Twenty-five pirates packed in a confined space, often for weeks on end -
that was bound to generate aggression. And, besides the usual quota of mercenaries and criminals primarily interested in brim-full credsticks, keen hunters, who at least scented their quarry in the other camp, and sectarians out for the overthrow of the existing order, there were always in such agglomerations a few seriously disturbed weirdos; characters who had a weakness, not for turning the other cheek on their neighbor, but for slitting open his belly if they took offense. And that could be provoked by nothing more than one look too many. But Tupamaro knew how to keep her people occupied with physically draining work and keep them in check with the right amount of pressure. If it proved necessary, she had been known to shoot the balls off one or the other to make her point of view clear.
Pandur had witnessed this and it had been a disgusting, blood-
spattering mess. The fellow was still on board and Heaven alone knew when he would take his revenge and stick something sharp into some part of his captain's anatomy. To all outward appearances, however, he had knuckled under ever since and become almost lap-trained.
What had once been a man, and whom no one dared call eunuch despite his handicap, would now be crouching at the side hull gate, nervously checking his weapons and waiting for the gate to slide up and for the Broken Heart to spit out its shooting cargo.
His face contorted, Pandur gripped the handlebars of the wamo, huddling over it as low as possible and seeking the protection of the plexiglass windshield, which curved over the instruments in a half-dome and was supposed to shield the rider at the same time. He tried to ignore the spray which, missing the windshield, misted up the visor on his helmet. The bike jerked and strained in its fastenings as the Broken Heart juddered over the waves, and somewhere down below, between the bike and the catapult's suspension, various clinking sounds joined together to produce a metallic singing.
"King Creole in sight," Tupamaro's voice came over the earphones. "We'll tackle them from windward. Launching the wamos in twenty seconds."
Pandur switched on the headlight. Ahead he spotted the lights of the container ship, which rose out of the water like a floating mountain. In the same instant the flak canons opened up. They were aiming at the other vessel's bridge to take out the electronics. Most of the bullets went wide of their mark or damaged the containers lashed to the deck. The rolling of the two ships turned even computer-controlled canon fire into a lottery. Finally, three or four tightly grouped hits shaved off the left-hand section of the bridge. Either the electronics were disrupted or the duty navigator from the Marine Inspectorate had realized that the King Creole could not escape. At any rate, the freighter slowed down and eventually even drifted on the water without making headway. Tupamaro ceased fire immediately so as not to damage important cargo by any more misses.
For a moment it looked as though the Broken Heart was going to ram her big sister, but Tupamaro was already steering a shallow left curve to the port side of the other vessel. She kept a bare fifty meters off and reduced speed by switching to counter-thrust. In the darkness it was impossible to make out whether the King Creole had canon on board. Just in case, Tupamaro held the hovercraft in a position that experience taught was a blind spot.
Silently moving his lips, Pandur had counted down the seconds. Then he felt a violent shove and in the next moment his wamo hit the surface of the water and rode the summits of the mountainous waves like a flat pebble. His speed slowed, his own steering came into play. Simultaneously, Pandur felt the thrust from the catapult being replaced by the power of the bike's turbine.
The wamo had been on the left of the bow. Pandur steered a wide left curve so as not to step on Druse's toes and to let the Broken Heart get ahead. He came almost full circle and then stayed on the freighter's stern.
On board the King Creole, several people could be seen. Then light machine guns started to rattle.
"Drek!" cursed Druse. "Another tough run, chummer."
Pandur made no comment. He assumed the security forces had only joined the ship in the German Bight. Since the increased incidence of toxic spirits, the North Sea had been classified a contaminated body of water. Although the major shipping routes were kept open by special cleansing vessels, so weakening the power of the spirits in those parts, the crossing of the North Sea still remained risky for Inman beings. The pirates could write a book on the subject; there were constant assaults by spirits which led to the loss of human life. The shipowners had taken the lessons to heart and deployed largely computer-controlled ships. Only long-haul vessels had three to six crew members on board. Pandur didn't know if the King Creole was one
of them, but the people with the shooters by no means gave the impression of being ordinary seamen.
Tupamaro joined in with Druse and let out a curse, but didn't seem overly surprised. Pandur had known her more annoyed at times. He wasn't aware of what Tupamaro's informant had told her about the cargo - pirate skippers didn't talk about these matters - but the armed escort squad led him to suspect that the King Creole had unusually valuable freight on board. It was even possible Druse's hunch had been right. Electronics always fetched a high price.
"Your turn!" Tupamaro's voice came over the headphones. This was meant for Pandur and Druse equally.
Actually, the security people were not a real surprise for Pandur and Druse either. Escort vessels belonging to the Shipowners' Guild were rarely encountered, but guards on board were not unusual. It was mainly for this eventuality that the wamo riders now found themselves on the water.
On the other side, Druse's FN-MAG 5 was just beginning to chatter. Pandur didn't enjoy this part of his work. Joylessly, Pandur aimed fire at the stern, where two figures, who felt they just had to blow him off his wamo with their MGs, had shown themselves. With his Vindicator he had more up his sleeve than Druse with his machine gun. As Pandur pressed himself tight over the handlebars behind the protection of the plexiglass shield and hurtled towards the King Creole, he directed the minicanon with slight movements of his head. His helmet contained an aiming device whose red crosswire glowed before his eyes. He raised his head slightly until it was level with the ship's rail and pressed the firing button set in the handlebars. The Vindicator's six tubes spewed ammo. Pandur deliberately fired too far to the left. He didn't want to kill the guys, just chase them off. It worked. Impressed by the Vindicator's penetration, the mercenaries withdrew to safer parts of the ship. The machine guns fell silent.
Under the recoils from the Vindicator, the wamo hopped around above the waves like jello and Pandur had trouble keeping control of the vehicle. He let go the firing button and jerked the wamo past the freighter's stern at the last second. The Vindicator was like an oversized penis and was attached to the wamo at just about the appropriate height. You could easily let your imagination run away with you when the thing was discharging its load. But Pandur hated this weapon. He had never wanted to be a street samurai - yet what was he doing now? He was acting the sea samurai, who primarily defined himself in terms of a powerful blaster. Basically, he told himself yet once more, he had long since had his fill of the pirate life.
Pandur had heard of wamo riders who had flipped out, zigzagging across the water, mowing down friend and foe alike as long as fuel and ammo held out or until a direct hit sent wamo and rider to feed the fish. He was not at risk of that. But he had at least more than just an inkling why something like that could occur. Combine a powerful motorbike with a powerful weapon, put a guy in the saddle who has nothing to lose, give him some stuff. The result is intoxication. Breathtaking speed, titillating vibrations, crackling ammo. Power! Revenge for everything the guy has ever been through, whether justified or not. Enforcement. Judgement Day on overdrive. That was too hot for some of the characters who actually prided themselves on being cool.
Pandur flung the wamo into a right-hand arc, drawing fire from the starboard side of the King Creole. He was way too fast and offered too small and too narrow a target to be hit.
Druse's wamo came racing up from the freighter's bow, like a sea monster with one blazing eye, drawing more MGs away from the port side. This was the main purpose of the exercise. Above the din Pandur heard something like the deep clanging of a bell. Magnetic anchors were striking the freighter's hull. Apparently the hull gate of the Broken Heart was open wide enough. Tupamaro's boarding party had started to fire ropes at the King Creole's rail from heavy boarding pistols through the widening gap.
The second circle was completed and Pandur was guiding his wamo towards the King Creole again. For a matter of seconds, Druse, coming from the opposite direction, lay almost parallel to Pandur and not more than ten meters off. He gave him the thumbs-up. Both wamos tore towards the freighter, their weapons rattling, wiping the King Creole's deck clean.
Another extended loop. This time Pandur swept close beneath the ship's side, curved round the bow and attacked from port.
He saw the first pirates clambering on board, opened fire on the bridge again when gunfire came from it, and then had quite a job veering away just inches from the Broken Heart.
"Good work, chummer," praised Tupamaro.
"Drek," Pandur mumbled. He wasn't proud of what he had done.
He reduced the wamo's speed and steered a wide arc. For the first time he could feel that all three of the wamo's skids had contact with the water at the same time. Up to now he had been riding on the central skid and using one of the two others to stabilize and steer the bike. He drew a deep breath. True, he hadn't yet finished today's job, but the dirty work was done. He hoped.
As previously agreed, Pandur rode wide loops up the Weser while Druse covered the open sea.
On board the King Creole there was still firing. The security people were now no longer shooting at the wamos, but defending themselves against the boarding party. They had bad cards. The firing fell silent. Either the security men were singing hallelujah, or they had hidden and were hoping this would enable them to get their butts back ashore unharmed. Unless there was a killer with tracker dog instincts among the pirates, one who felt compelled to settle old scores, their ruse might even work.
Tupamaro instructed the boarding party by radio to look for certain containers that were below deck. Her informant had marked them. There wasn't much time left. It had to be assumed that the Ring Creole had radioed for help. In addition, the Broken Heart was neither big enough to take on large containers at sea nor equipped to do so. The pirates would break open the marked containers and remove the most interesting cargo.
Weapons, cyber equipment, microelectronics, lasers, microsurgical products... Depending on what was going. Whatever fetched good prices on the black market. The Broken Heart's loading crane was already depositing the first shipping cases on the freighter's deck.
Unless boats of the River Police or the Border Protection Force were patrolling nearby, the pirates had about half an hour available to them. That was how long it would take the other side to sail from Cuxhaven or Wilhelmshaven and reach the King Creole. Pandur and Druse were now acting as guard dogs. The wamos were fitted with highly sensitive microradar sets, which worked selectively and only responded to the known types of vessel the opposition used.
Tupamaro drove on her crew remorselessly over the radio as if she had analysed every move in advance and allotted a time for each. She addressed the pirates by name, cursed and swore at them, making use of a wide range of obscenities. Pandur tried to ignore the voice in his headset, but he just couldn't. Tupamaro's voice, which for such a solid, earthy woman sounded somewhat shrill, always demanded a high degree of attention and never failed to get it. The captain didn't move from the pilot's cockpit the whole time. Together with Lady X, perhaps Carlo too, as well as three cargo handlers in the hold, she had stayed behind on the hovercraft. There she sat among the controls, ready at any time to order the crew back and, with an emergency start, take the Broken Heart out of the danger zone. Her voice, however, betrayed the fact that she would rather have been on the King Creole urging on anybody she suspected of idleness. Maybe even with the stunbaton she used on board the hovercraft to separate squabblers.
Even without a baton at their backs, the pirates were working with precision, speed and a positively unbelievable discipline. Each of them knew that the level of his credstick would be decided in these few minutes, as the crew had a percentage stake in the proceeds of the contraband. There could be no better incentive for hard work and cooperation.
Tupamaro operated the loading crane and deployed it as confidently and deftly as a rigger would his waldos. Within five minutes she brought four loads on board the Broken Heart yet still swore unremittingly
because things weren't going fast enough for her.
In elongated figure eights, Pandur patrolled a quadrant of a good square kilometer of water. So far there had been no activity. Just outside the zone, a small object was moving but it did not match the characteristics of police or Border Protection Force boats. As the zone lay upriver, it was not without its problems in the dark. There was the superstructure of a wreck sticking out of the water, the undamaged dome of a lighthouse and a stretch, barely awash, under which cracked concrete could be seen. It seemed to be the remains of what had once been a high-rise. Pandur rode as slowly and carefully as possible. But there was a minimum speed he had to maintain. When he had first ridden a wamo months ago, he had taken a dip quite a few times for going too slowly. The extra features, especially the Vindicator, caused the bike to sink to saddle level if the forward thrust was too low. It was then impossible to start the bike himself. In those early days, the pirates had, with foresight, attached a line and given the bike push-
starts, accompanied by great general mirth. Pandur had felt as ridiculous as a rump-heavy waterskier who would have been better advised by his instructor to pop a simsense chip and play through the whole adventure in his mind.
Now and again, Pandur reported his position, taking his readings from the helmet display. At about the same intervals, Druse's reports were received. The other freighter, which he had noticed earlier, was moving in his area. Her course was still taking her southwest.
As Pandur was riding the outer loop, which brought him closest to the lights of the Bremerhaven arcology, he registered on the screen of his helmet radar that the object previously observed had moved into his control zone. Judging by the size, it could only be a motor yacht. But it could also be a Customs launch. The object was moving at moderate speed - not more than ten knots, Pandur guessed - but, if it held its course, would pass the two other vessels in a good ten minutes.